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Do You a Favor.

I've always been over-verbose, under-limited and overall difficult to shut up. Friends, acquaintances and even lovers have mentioned my propensity for verbiage.

You might think that for a long time, that was outlet here. You'd be wrong.

I've always been like that, since I can remember - which, to be entirely honest, is perhaps a decade. My earliest memory stretches two, but there wasn't a whole lot of the 90s that I cared to remember. I live my life as a decade-nt subject. The oughts and I are two, unless they agree to assimilate. I'll buy an iPod eventually, I promise.

There have been drunken zuihitsus in the past, and there may be in the future - but the effort seems to have gone out of spontaneous thread-making. It almost makes it not worth it, in a way. I could corner and kill a racoon, take gruesome pictures of my inattention to life and get more attention than coming up with an original thought.

Scary scary media, I'd rather smoke a joint in the desert with departed moderators.

It's not my fault, I promise you. I went to get a library card the other day to prove it. I am a victim, and we are all of us victims. I don't hold a monopoly on the category.

I walked down from my place. It's updown a hill and across a bridge, the very definition of a hero's journey. I imagined conversations I would have and tomes I would scrutinize on the way down.

A third grade child, reading some book: The cover is blurred, battered. I am waiting nearby, too cool for kids. I recognize the title and laugh, she asks me about it. I admit that when I was her age I was reading the Chronicles of Narnia and learning English. She doesn't laugh; she's nine years old and I've just ruined the library for her.

Walking in stops my bizarre story - a man in his fifties confides in me. He watches two movies every night, without fail. He used to watch six a day but then I stopped listening because that's ridiculous and I refuse to believe it. He moves away disappointed and flicks the DVD case to Dragon Tiger Gate at me. It's true, it might be too violent to watch alone.

I show my passport and my rental lease. I've never shown a rental lease before, certainly not photocopied, and I have no idea that the public library has no authority to take it from me. The woman at the counter looks at me three times writing down my last name. Either I have the worst last name in the world or she's attracted to me. I sweat quietly and try not to spot the difference. She takes the photocopy and I let her.

A crazy thought. I hear women like men who read. It must explain why I lie in a different bed night after night - drunk and drugged, oversexed and insensate, until the touch of dawn or noon creeps across the night. Forget that it's pure imagination and self-deception. I meet her eyes - someone's eyes - and they spell letters and digits. My postal code. Yes, I do have it - I think.

It turns out I really do. I always sleep at home.

She hands me my card - fourteen digits - and I stop thinking about us having sex. She's older than my mother and I feel guilty. Then I feel ashamed of that reaction. I take my card and smile as best I can - I've never been photogenic. She laughs me out and I remember that I don't own the world.

I walk home uphill. My canvas shoes hug wet leaves and leach in the cold.

When you write like this I tend to enjoy the read but have no idea what I'm supposed to be taking away from it and can barely even follow what's happening. You write with a kind of deranged poetry. You know that mythical line between genius and insanity? I get the feeling you mount that thin line whenever you please and ride it all night long. Probably convince it it's fat and leave it crying and confused as the first rays of dawn appear over the horizon.

In spoken-word format I think your writing could take on something of a hypnotic quality.

“Today a young man on acid realized that all matter is merely energy condensed to a slow vibration, that we are all one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively, there is no such thing as death, life is only a dream, and we are the imagination of ourselves.” – Bill Hicks

When you write like this I tend to enjoy the read but have no idea what I'm supposed to be taking away from it and can barely even follow what's happening. You write with a kind of deranged poetry. You know that mythical line between genius and insanity? I get the feeling you mount that thin line whenever you please and ride it all night long. Probably convince it it's fat and leave it crying and confused as the first rays of dawn appear over the horizon.

In spoken-word format I think your writing could take on something of a hypnotic quality.

Yeah this. I always read T-6005s threads, no matter how fucking long they are, but I have never anything to respond with.

{............................................the wind------------->is blllooowwwwiiiinnngggggggg
{............................the direction........It travels.................................}
{..........................in..................... .........from the top.....................}
{..............my ballot............................................ .of this ................}
{..........I cast.............................................. ..............mountain.......}
{.......voter,.................................... .......................................to.....}
{Absentee......................................... ........................................the}~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~bottom of the dry riverbed and when it arrives, it is read by the illiterates and torn up by their yellowed, wretched fingernails.

My voice scratches for protest, but it can barely be heard over the sound of bombs landing .................................................. .................................................. .................in.................................................. .................................................. ...............yards and refusing to detonate. Is this what our war is now? Heavy things dropped from airplanes onto the homes of people with whom we disagree?

We are all bastard pigs, rolling in our mud every day, trotting back home and showering in our caustic chemicals. Life is the poison! We drink to remember a day when we didn't need to drink to remember a day when we didn't to drink to remember a day ad nauseum et cetera et alii

Reading the lost messages in this ghost town is not unlike throwing rocks up at the sky; it might remind you of a time when asteroids smashed the planet and killed all of the dinosaurs and then we were thrown up by the ocean as humans, but then the rocks will inevitably fall and hit you in the face and break your glasses and then you'll be stuck just remembering.

Do you a favor? How about we do ourselves all a favor and let the rocks fall anyways; black eyes and bruises drawing blood through our noses and then maybe we might remember what it was like to not need to drink to remember a day where we didn't need to drink to remember a day.

When you write like this I tend to enjoy the read but have no idea what I'm supposed to be taking away from it and can barely even follow what's happening. You write with a kind of deranged poetry. You know that mythical line between genius and insanity? I get the feeling you mount that thin line whenever you please and ride it all night long. Probably convince it it's fat and leave it crying and confused as the first rays of dawn appear over the horizon.

In spoken-word format I think your writing could take on something of a hypnotic quality.

I thought you'd (you had not you would) come back. But I said nothing.

I feel like the insanity you refer to is the enjoyable yet ultimately controllable range of an artist's 'output' - the so-narcissistic feeling of being mildly creative. I am not an artist, but I empathize with the process.

What I mean is that I'm not insane, but I wish I had the arrogance to claim I am. Also I'm glad you like it. Someday I hope to write a whole book like it, but I don't think it would be enjoyable so I wrote one about something entirely different. Now when I read it it feels like a tenth-grader put about half of one effort into it. So I'm editing. Not fun.

Originally Posted by nieh

Are you attempting nanowrimo again this year? This is my first time trying and I'm not getting off to a very good start.

I am not. Actually, I'm editing a nanowrimo from two years ago that might turn out to make a semi-readable book. It's not quite as much fun.

I love Nanowrimo though, and next year I'm totally in. It allows you to take every idea, phrase and structurally perfect plot in your mind and throw them against the page. It's a sort of mental purging. You'll waste a lot of ideas doing it, but what's amazing is that you finally get to see what they look like when they come out. And nothing says you can't seriously use them while writing down the line. I have actually folded half-pages from my first Nanowrimo into a few academic essays here and there. The good ones, anyway.

Originally Posted by RageAndLov

Yeah this. I always read T-6005s threads, no matter how fucking long they are, but I have never anything to respond with.

I appreciate that, I do. I think it's fantastic that people read it. I'd like to suggest that you do it yourself. You can put a sentence together. Why not a hundred sentences? Follow the exercise at first, just letting your fingers pull you ahead, and then it ceases to be an exercise. You get to examine your own thoughts as they come out.

Sure, they come back into some structure when your fingers move again, but that's half the fun. Others get to enjoy the reconverted, static version. You experience the moment in motion.

Why do you not consider yourself to be an artist? I initially started writing some guesses but have decided simply asking is better.

“Today a young man on acid realized that all matter is merely energy condensed to a slow vibration, that we are all one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively, there is no such thing as death, life is only a dream, and we are the imagination of ourselves.” – Bill Hicks

Why do you not consider yourself to be an artist? I initially started writing some guesses but have decided simply asking is better.

Probably just because the term 'artist' bothers me. It just seems like such a serious title to claim for yourself. I don't perform or sell what I do/make, and I barely share it. It's a hobby as much as anything that I've dedicated time to learning, and I do it because it's fun.

Down the line I'd love to sell the book or have someone seriously love the music I make, but whether or not that happens I don't think I'll ever come to see myself as an artist in 'that sense.' It might seem arrogant, because I sound like I'm too humble to claim to be an artist, but I have the utmost respect for (some) performers, writers, and creators. I think of them as artists - I just don't feel the need to either a) cheapen the category by inserting myself into it because I 'also' wrote a song once or b) inflate my own sense of self-worth by turning what I do into something worthy of a declarative title.

Mike - your post was as topographically diverse as it was unhinged. Kudos.